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Newbee from Massachusetts

Taking my third class of Bee School tonight with the Norfolk County Beekeepers Association..... My kids and I have 2 hives ready to assemble and bees on order for the spring.... Class is incredible and there is such a wealth of information and experience.... This is going to "bee" awesome!

Have been making mead since 2004 and my son thought it about time we had our own hives..... LOL!

Re: Newbee from Massachusetts

Bob....I started 4 hives last Spring. I did the same thing as you by signing up for some bee webinars online. Recommend a few books to you; Beekeeping for Dummies, Backyard Beekeeper, and The Queen Must Die....all on Amazon. Dummies and Backyard are great instructional books and Queen is a great observational book on the life and traits of honeybees. Do you have a local bee association near you? If so, go to a meeting. The biggest piece of advice to you is to make sure you feed your new colonies sugar water all summer long. I made the mistake of stopping the feeding and couldn't figure out why they wouldn't make wax. Walmart sells 25 lb bags of sugar for about $14. This is a good website, but do a search for other blogs and instructional sites. Brushy Mountain (www.brushymountainbeefarm.com) has great instructional videos that cover every topic. Also, on YouTube.com there is a great series called "Honey Bees and Beekeeping". There are seven episodes that are split into 3 or 4 parts. Will you be installing your bee packages into the hives?

You'll find that this is a very addicting hobby and you'll always be praying for a nice day to take a peek into your hives. I think it's great that you are involving your kids in this.

Re: Newbee from Massachusetts

Originally Posted by MaydayMalone

Bob....I started 4 hives last Spring. I did the same thing as you by signing up for some bee webinars online. Recommend a few books to you; Beekeeping for Dummies, Backyard Beekeeper, and The Queen Must Die....all on Amazon. Dummies and Backyard are great instructional books and Queen is a great observational book on the life and traits of honeybees. Do you have a local bee association near you? If so, go to a meeting. The biggest piece of advice to you is to make sure you feed your new colonies sugar water all summer long. I made the mistake of stopping the feeding and couldn't figure out why they wouldn't make wax. Walmart sells 25 lb bags of sugar for about $14. This is a good website, but do a search for other blogs and instructional sites. Brushy Mountain (www.brushymountainbeefarm.com) has great instructional videos that cover every topic. Also, on YouTube.com there is a great series called "Honey Bees and Beekeeping". There are seven episodes that are split into 3 or 4 parts. Will you be installing your bee packages into the hives?

You'll find that this is a very addicting hobby and you'll always be praying for a nice day to take a peek into your hives. I think it's great that you are involving your kids in this.

Good Luck.

Thanks! Awesome stuff!

We joined the Norfolk County Beekeepers Association and they have been great! They are currently running a bee school (which we are attending) that will run through April which is when we expect our bees to arrive.... We will be installing our own packages...... Currently have 2 hives that still need to be assembled but that is part of which will be covered in the class tonight.... We will be setting up a build party to take care of that in the next couple of weekends...;- )

I hear you on the wealth of information that is on you tube.... How did we ever get along before the internet!

Re: Newbee from Massachusetts

Welcome Bob. You are in for a wonderful experience with keeping bees. Work of caution is it can get addictive. I started out with two hives a number of years ago and this past season i managed 35 hives at its peak before winter combines and such.